Back to Dye Printing Tricks & Tips
Sure can!
1. Get a photo of some rainy day clouds.
I didn't have one, so I made one. Here I used the Filter "Clouds" with some bluish colors. (>Filter>Render>Render Clouds)
Then using some cloud brushes and the smudge tool I had a fairly decent sky.
2. Then I made a new layer and filled it with Black.
3. With the new solid black layer active I added some noise (>Filter>Add Noise; here I used 25% with a 300 dpi; but depending on your resolution you'll need to experiment. I also used a Distribution of "Gaussian" and checked "Monochromatic").
4. Now pull up Levels. We'll grab the Black tone triangle and pull it to the right, and the White tone triangle and pull it to the left. This will rid us of lots of midtones, deleting all but the brightest whites. You want rain, not deluge!
5. Do a quick Blur More to soften the edges of the dots (>Filters>Blur>Blur More).
6. Now let's make the rain fall. Use the Motion Blur filter (>Filters>Blur>Motion Blur). I don't like to use straight down, so I set the angle to -81 degrees. You'll have some fun figuring out which way your rain should fall. Also experiment with the Distance in pixels. Here 7 was fine.
8. Pull up the Levels again to adjust the rain streaks repeating the process of step #4 (Move the Black tone triangle and pull it to the right, and move the White tone triangle to the left).
9. Now this is where Layer Modes really come in handy. Instead of having to delete the black areas (and a myriad of gray areas), make sure the rain layer is on top of the cloud layer and switch the mode from Normal to Screen.
10. It's raining! If you need more streakiness, you can always use the Motion Blur again.
